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THE PROBLEM OF SUFFERING. 357 



of the existence of suffering among the lower animals, 

 as well as with men, and, consequently, of the deeper 

 problem of the origin and solution of evil, is that sug- 

 gested in the Scriptures — in the Book of Job, for ex- 

 ample — that there is in very truth a spiritual conflict in 

 the universe between the forces (shall we say?) of 

 good and evil, and that pain, not only with us but with 

 the rest of creation, is, and has ever been, perpetrated 

 (in theological terminology) by our common Adver- 

 sary. The Lord God brings his aims to naught by 

 the fruition of love, longsuffering, peace, and gentle- 

 ness ; but the evil was there, and it was evil, and we have 

 suffered pain, and I do not say that we could not have 

 had the higher life without it. There seems to have 

 been (all things point to it, in my mind) a considerable 

 catastrophe at some time in the history of the human 

 race, the effects of which extend even now unto .all 

 Nature. Man fell; and we have no record that he 

 was unhappy before the fall. Sin is the transgression 

 of the law; and with sin has come pain, perhaps only 

 to be eliminated when we shall have learned, through 

 the long schooling of the centuries, so to conform our 

 lives to the indwelling of His presence that evil shall 

 no longer be amongst us. 



The supremacy of evil, however, can be but a tem- 

 poral triumph. Pain is not an irremediable state of 

 affairs. No one who has faith can believe that. Every 

 one who holds serene any scrap of confidence that, after 

 all, the world was not made to be a failure must believe, 

 with Tennyson, that, though the vision is blinded from 

 us by the veil, yet "somehow good will be the final goal 

 of ill," and that in permitting evil it has not been the 



